Dear Diary,

A school curriculum that changes with the current geopolitical situation. I didn't even know that could be A Thing.

After marching around all day yesterday afternoon with nothing but a middling short nap over the three days previous, I hit the bed like a log. Soothing dream about the lakeside hilltop. Really wanna know if those psychedelic tadpoles are A Thing That Exists or just dream fodder. 'Cause if they're real and they have anything like the effect they have in my dreams, we gone get some new bath toys up in this bitch.

Not like, literally 'up in'. Ew. Shuddering ew, even. Shuddering ew with a squealed, 'hentai!' Just, like, nibbling at my toes or some shit?

Goddammit, that's not better, is it? I dunno. Fuck it, I'll leave it up to Saffron. Either she'll know what's right and tell me, or she can't figure it out and that means it's way too tough for me, or she knows and she'll lie to me about it for nefarious reasons, which ought to upset me but is still kinda hot, and I'd never know anyway, because me trying to outwit her is like Pee Wee Herman trying to straight up wrestle The Rock.

Y'know, I never worried about this shit back in Camden. My sum total thought process regarding the entire topic? Rape Bad, Orgasm Good. STD Painful. Pregnancy Inconvenient. Done. No moralizing, no deep introspection, just wrap it up and ring the bell, y'know? Part of me misses that simplicity, but most of me totally gets that it's a little childish. Of course, I kinda wonder if that's why I'm with who I'm with and the reason for which of us wears the pants. I mean, okay, Saffron and I both wear pants, and Marie's the one in the skirt, but, I dunno, which one of us wears the strap on? Except we don't have one of those.

Okay, laughing at myself as I'm proving my fucking point by looking for a childish way to say 'I like giving up control and thus responsibility in bed'. What? I'm capable of speaking vaguely like an adult when I try.

Still, random wandering psychotropic orgasm critters in the tub? Hard to not wonder about.

Funny, I have way more sex here in Phileo than I ever did in Camden, although that might have been the, y'know, possibility of becoming pregnant, or not being married, or any number of things. 'Being in peak physical condition' probably doesn't hurt. When everything works better, everything works better, and all the sex hormones count as better. That's before you even get into the freaky positions duBois' Hot Paired Yoga puts you in the shape to do. Funny thing about it? I talk about it way less. Yeah, I know, I talk about it a fair chunk here, but I swear to god there were days when I did not open my mouth without some real freaky innuendo coming out of it. The freakier the better. Like I was some kind of mutant edge lord who thought random offensive sex comments were the soul of edginess. It got so bad that most of my teachers got tired of giving me detention and shit. How bad was I that my teachers stopped reporting me for cutting because that way I couldn't disrupt class with behavior that could get them in trouble. Shit, at one point a teacher, like the only one who never pointed that "Really, Diaz?" look at me, came up with a code phrase, just for me. If he said 'Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball', it was like a fucking fencing coach saying 'Touché, you win'. I'd shut up, because what are you gonna do when the old fart you're fucking with goes, "Yes, you're very smart hot, shut up." I mean, I might have left the seat a little wet, but I shut up.

Don't judge me.

So anyway, lots of psychedelic tadpoles last night, I got it on the brain today, and of course Saffron and I have a full day class, because of course we do.

We get there and Doc DeLeon had a really shitty map of the Delaware Valley up on the front wall of the room.

"We already studied New Amsterdam," came the predictable bitch from Lancaster the Lesser.

Doc DeLeon sighed, "I am aware, yet should things go poorly for Marshall duBois, should you be deployed, I believe it would be in your best interest to have all of the pertinent geographic details fresh in your mind instead of the coastline near Palermo."

"So my education suffers because some ignorant Bag can't remember their back yard."

Maybe I'd had too little sleep. Maybe I'd caught too much shit. Maybe I'd finally started to think of myself as worth more than an equivalent mass of runny manure. Maybe Lancaster'd gone one step too far.

Maybe I knew exactly which person in this class would wind up in the field first. A full wave before any of the rest of us, like Bill or Angel or Me, would be there to back her up.

I stood. Not slowly, but I didn't kick my chair back out of the way. I pushed it aside with my hand as I turned to face Lancaster and his Lackeys. They turned to look at me. Fuck, the entire class turned to look at me. I couldn't figure what kind of rhetoric pose would look best, so I just left my hand gripping the back of the chair. I expected to be screaming, but my voice came out calm and level. Disdainful as fuck, yeah, but calmly disdainful. "Look, Larry, I get that you've gotten everything in the world handed to you your entire life. I get that you've been told you're better than everyone else. I get that you're a short piece of shit in a family that has to duck walking under normal doors."

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He opened his mouth, my grip on the chair tightened, and my voice went up a few decibels. "Let. Me. Finish." His mouth snapped shut. "I get that you hide your lack of brains by spewing racist, sexist bullshit out like a whale blowing spooge all over the deck of the ship that just killed it. I get how much hush money your daddy pays the pairs of hookers to fellate your micro-penis and blow smoke on your prostate so you too can experience the wonders of sexual completion."

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Doc DeLeon rising. I shot him a 'not the time' look, something over by my hand cracked, and I drew myself up as tall as I felt wearing The Dress, refocusing on Lancaster. "I get that you know that you're a useless piece of shit, a complete embarrassment to House Lancaster, and that eats you up inside. Really? At this fucking point? If even once you had as much class as your big brother and acknowledged and just apologized for even one of the shortcomings that are at least partially under your control? I could feel bad for you. No, check that, I do feel bad for you, but if you pretended to be an adult human being even once, I could act on feeling sorry for you and, fuck, I don't know, help you or some shit. Everybody's somebody's fetish; there's gotta be a woman who sucks up your verbal diarrhea like it's fine wine, whose libido makes her mouth water at the sight of your rice-grain-sized cock. I'd bully the fuck out of everybody to find her and lock her delusional ass in your cell with you for a week of bliss."

Angel snorted, and I shot her a look expressing how not joking I was being. She choked and looked away. "But right now? What you're doing? Your microcephalic insecurity complex is putting people I care about in danger. I'mma be frank about that; there are some people, maybe even in this room, who I only care about because they might catch a bullet..."

Tabitha

No.

"...that might otherwise hit someone I care deeply for. But right now you're even putting the bullet catchers in danger, which puts my friends, my family, the mother of my child in more danger than the already unacceptable level of danger they may find themselves in. That? That I will not fucking let stand. You wanna throw down in Combat Training? Come at me. You wanna be a monumental dick in PT? What the fuck ever, we can still run laps while ignoring your deeply deficient ass. But right here? Right now? Where Doc DeLeon has gone out of his way to try and give all of us even the tiniest slice of a better chance to come out of the ratfuck brewing up north as minimally scathed as possible?"

I strode over to him. Before he could react I got right up to his fucking anime-protagonist position desk, close enough he'd have to push through me to stand. Chairs to either side slid against the floor, and my eyes locked with Lancaster's I said, "Rider. Rosen. Put your asses on your seats before I finish speaking or my grudge with you will be personal instead of amusing side fuckery to dick with Larry here." Two thumps of asses hitting chairs told me all I needed to know.

I leaned down until our noses almost touched. I looked him right in his pretty baby blues and finished, "Right here, right now, you will shut your fucking mouth and pretend to be a wilting violet scared that if she speaks up, moves around, or fucking breathes too loud her classmates will gang rape her to death, or I swear on everything you hold dear that you will wish... Wish hard, for longer than you would believe possible, to die for good before I am done burning your own fucking soul to Revive you every time I torture you to death."

I stopped, listening to the 'drip, drip, drip' coming from under his chair for a six count before I breathed out loud enough for everyone to hear, "do we have an understanding?"

His head jerked down and up, once. I turned my head just a little to the side and said, "I didn't hear you." When his mouth slipped open, my gaze shot back around to lock to his, "which means you're finally paying some fucking attention. Don't fuck it up now, Larry. I'm short on fuckin' sleep, and if you make me do all that shit, I swear I will actually be pissed off when I do it." I think I heard a tooth crack when he slammed his mouth shut, and after that he just sat there trying not to shiver too much.

I nodded, turned, and walked back to my desk. Everyone I could see except Raven stared at me in utter silence broken only by my boot heels on the floor. I looked around, couldn't find my chair, grabbed another one from the next row over, slid it next to Saffron's behind her desk, spun, and slouched down into it, my arm going around her as I did. In the best fuckin' uWu voice I have ever done, my eyes popping open as wide as I could, I squeaked, "ready to learn, Sempai!"

Doc DeLeon didn't move for like a solid thirty seconds, at which point he cleared his throat and said, "while I lost count of how many legally actionable statements were just made, as I am entirely certain as to the foolishness of pressing those particular charges, let's just look on this for the moment as a fortuitous learning aid, shall we?" He spun about, poking stick reaching out to tap the map. "So, the Delaware Valley..."

Not sure what my favorite part of the rest of the day was, but two things stand out. The first was Raven handing me a really nice sketch at the end of class. Me, standing there looking like an actual adult, my hand on the back rail of one of the Indestructible Chairs, which for its own part had flames wreathing every bit of itself. When I looked down behind my desk, I saw a low pile of dark ash, which explained where my chair had gone.

The second was when class let out and Saffron led me back to the dorm, back to our room, where she pulled the door shut and stripped faster than I thought possible. Moist noises and musky scent filled the room as she did so. She knelt on the bed, her eyes unfocused and her whole body shuddering as she raised her gaze just far enough to stare at my crotch. "Do with me as you will. I ask only that you show so little mercy that you shock our dear Marie should she find out. Should I die in this war, I want to die still aching from and yearning for this next hour."

Yeah. Yeah, that whole 'not sure which I like more' thing is an absolute fuckin' lie.